


fate and other misfortunes

by kirinokisu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:38:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirinokisu/pseuds/kirinokisu
Summary: Tsukishima did not believe that time changed people. He was the living proof of that. But then, he was also a fool.





	fate and other misfortunes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melliejellie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliejellie/gifts).



> This is for Mellie, as part of a kurotsuki server Valentine's Day exchange. I am so, so incredibly sorry for posting this late but I hope you enjoy regardless and please feel free to kick me! I certainly deserve.

Whoever said time changed people was an idiot. And though Tsukishima did not say it out loud, across from him, Yachi winced.

“Sorry,” he murmured. 

“No, you're not."

"No, I'm not."

She smiled into her massive sunglasses emoji cup. They were sitting in a busy corner of a mediocre but somehow still popular coffee shop just across the road from campus, drinking overpriced tea and pouring over textbooks. It was a routine of theirs, developed somewhere along the months they'd both been attending the same Todai prep school. Yachi was better with languages, and Tsukishima had a thing for numbers. It worked.

"Is it that bad?" she asked, pink pen tapping against the glossy paper of her English textbook.

Tsukishima made a point to not look at her, despite knowing the futility of it. "Is what that bad?"

"Avoiding the subject will not make it go away, Kei-kun."

He knew that, too. Come tomorrow, the issue would still be there. Kuroo would still be there. In the flesh. Looking at Tsukishima from behind those ridiculous reading glasses, smiling, as if teaching a few dozen idiots was anything but a horror story. As if he didn't know what that smile could do.

Just thinking about it made Tsukishima's stomach twist into something very unpleasant.

"It's just one course," Yachi said sympathetically, because apparently Tsukishima was making enough of a face. Or maybe she just knew him that well. "And it could be worse." Tsukishima raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Your life could be an actual romcom and then he would be your roommate. Or there could be only one bed."

"If I believed in higher powers, I would tell you not to jinx me like this."

"But you don't, do you, Kei-kun? So there's nothing to worry about."

"I _believe_ ," Tsukishima said, "that you will tell Suga-san about this and that's almost the same." Possibly worse, if Sawamura got involved too. Him, and his overprotective, oblivious tendencies. 

Wisely, Yachi neither denied nor confirmed. Tsukishima sighed.

He knew better than to beg for mercy.

 

-

 

Really though, the true idiot in that entire situation, regardless of beliefs, was Tsukishima himself. Which was the crux of it all.

He'd first met Kuroo on what could only be described as the most cursed day of his entire high school experience, and it hadn't even been a week since the opening ceremony. 

It had been a stupid, stupid crush at an almost first sight.

In Tsukishima's defence, the sight at least had been quite something. And quite ridiculous, in retrospect. 

He could still remember every detail: the way it had been pouring since the night before, lightning flashing against dark April skies, making the trees outside Tsukishima's bedroom window look like something out of a horror movie. He'd stayed up late, reading a crime novel his brother had given him the last time he visited from college. He didn't know whom to blame, himself or his brother, when the next morning he'd not only overslept, but also woken up from a nightmare involving a killer who looked suspiciously like Kageyama, fancy crown and all. The memory of that deranged smile still made Tsukishima shudder.

Maybe it had been a sign, if Tsukishima believed in such things.

But Tsukishima, a fool since that very day, paid it no mind. After dressing hastily in his uniform and shoving a half-burnt toast in his mouth, he went outside only to discover that his bike had been left outside during the night and in the raging storm, some of the spokes had been broken.

He'd almost turned around and went back to sleep.

Almost, because just then, the raging storm and the quiet morning misery came to a confused halt at the shrill, piercing noise of a car alarm. Blasting right outside Tsukishima family's front gate.

Later, he'd definitely blamed everything on his brother and his stupid brother. 

Because in that moment—that stupid, unexplainable moment—he'd made the stupidest, unexplainable decision to check on what was happening outside his protected little world. To see, if perhaps, someone else's morning had sucked as much as his did. If not more.

When he opened the gate and stepped just outside it, it wasn't the car Tsukishima saw first, but a person, dressed in a thin white t-shirt and Pikachu pajama bottoms, soaking wet and pressed tight to the driver's side, with a long metal stick wedged between the vehicle and the door, prying it open.

"This isn't what it looks like," the boy said with a panicked look on his face. "I'm not even old enough to drive yet!"

Tsukishima crossed his arms.

"I swear!" The boy jerked, as if he wanted to make some desperate, pacifying gesture or maybe even show his ID, but seemed to remember at the last moment the stick he was still holding in his hands. He sighed. "Look, it's broad daylight, it's raining, and I'm dressed in essentially my underwear. Do I really look like a car thief right now?"

And Tsukishima, soothed by the resignation and a goddamn fool, snorted. Loudly. "It's the hair."

It had been all the invitation Kuroo had needed to enter Tsukishima's life and wreck apparently permanent havoc in his system. 

Because almost three years later, nothing had changed: standing in the busy university hallway just outside the chemistry lab, Tsukishima's heart was beating so loud it was a wonder Kuroo didn't hear it. Or maybe he had, but was too good and kind and _Kuroo_ to ever mention it.

"Tsukki!" he exclaimed, face splitting with a grin Tsukishima had absolutely not missed. "Fancy meeting you here."

Three years and miles and miles of distance, and he still didn't know how to handle everything that was Kuroo Tetsurou. Not without feeling both obvious and awkward—the two things Tsukishima absolutely detested.

"Should you really be calling me that, Kuroo-san? Some might find it _inappropriate_."

Naturally, that only made Kuroo grin wider. Slyer. "Oho? Are you suggesting something, _Tsukishima-kun_?"

If Tsukishima had been Kageyama, he would've hurled a textbook at Kuroo's stupidly pretty face with his stupidly nerdy glasses. The heaviest one.

Alas, he was not, and the fact that he was even considering it made Tsukishima want to scream internally.

It wasn't even surprising. This was Kuroo, after all. Kuroo, with his teasing words and his knowing smirks and his damned ability to make Tsukishima _feel_. Or worse, hope. 

Because Tsukishima _knew_ there was so much more to Kuroo than just this. Knew all about the anxiety, and the fears, and the hard work. Knew even about his old obsession with the original Gundam and how he could still recite the most emotional scenes from it.

They had been friends, after all. During that first meeting, Kuroo had explained that he and his father had just moved to the neighbourhood and the reason for the apparent not-carjacking had been his old man leaving for work that morning with the keys to their car and the car still holding most of Kuroo's possessions, including his brand new school uniform. A few questionable YouTube videos later, and that was how Tsukishima had found him.

No matter what Yachi kept saying, it hadn't been fate.

Just as it hadn't been a coincidence that they both ended up at Todai. 

He knew they'd bump into each other eventually. Knew that Kuroo would be the one to seek him out. But at least for now, he was saved by the bell.

"My class is about to start," Tsukishima excused himself, careful not to bump into Kuroo in the doorway.

"Hey, Tsukki?" He stopped, but didn't turn. Not when Kuroo's voice had gone gentle and fond. "It's good to see you again."

 

-

 

He did his best to avoid Kuroo after that. Aside from chemistry classes—he came to those as late and left them as early as was polite and not obvious—he and Kuroo had little in common.

And that was fine.

 

-

 

Or it would've been fine, if Sugawara Koushi didn't exist just to make Tsukishima's life hard. With his sneaky, blackmailing ways, he managed to convince Tsukishima to attend one of the freshmen mixers, to supposedly socialise with the rest of his group.

It had been tolerable. For all of fifteen minutes.

Then, Kuroo was there. He came in late, rumpled and flushed from the cold, as if he'd been running all the way to the karaoke place the majority had voted on. Tsukishima had forgotten how good he looked in casual jeans and red flannel.

Even if his treacherous heart certainly hadn't. 

At least Kuroo had lost the glasses.

"So there's at least one thing that hasn't changed about you, Tsukki," Kuroo said conversationally. It was a little bit hard to hear, the room filled with off-key singing that was too loud and sugar-high freshmen that were too many. At Tsukishima's confused face, Kuroo chuckled. "Your scowling face. It's still the cutest."

"What are you doing here, Kuroo-san?"

With his arms folded behind his head and his gaze firmly on the neon stars-and-hearts filled ceiling, Kuroo shrugged, smiled easily. "Suga told me you would be here."

Tsukishima had no idea what was that supposed to mean, or how he was supposed to take it.

Kuroo turned his head to look at him, squinting in the dark. "I now owe him my soul. Please take pity."

He didn't look particularly pitiful; a little sad, maybe. A little tired. Tsukishima hated himself a little, knowing he was at least partially the cause. "You should know better than to make deals with Suga-san."

"Desperate times, desperate measures."

Once again, Tsukishima said nothing. A few of his classmates, giggly and hoarse from the singing, plopped down on the couch next to them. Kuroo laughed and made meaningless small talk. Tsukishima merely watched.

Kuroo always made it look so easy. Made being with him even easier.

Tsukishima downed the rest of the questionable green liquid in his glass. It tasted sugary and artificial.

The girls left after an old Arashi song started playing, and Kuroo turned back to him. "Wanna get out of here?"

He simply nodded.

 

-

 

They didn't go far. Just outside the building, to a small bench across from it. It was a busy night, the district never really sleeping. But the voices were muted, almost distant.

"Last winter," Kuroo began, as Tsukishima had expected him to, "when I came down to visit dad, you looked like you wanted to tell me something."

Wordlessly, Tsukishima nodded, fingers twisting in his lap. 

"Won't you tell me what it was?"

Tsukishima shook his head. 

It had been a stupid thing, a reckless impulse. They'd been lazing on his bedroom floor, reading manga and eating junk food they had to sneak past Tsukishima's mother. Something they used to do all the time but hadn't in a while. Tsukishima had just gotten his acceptance letter, and Kuroo was finally _there_. So close they were touching whenever one of them reached for the bowl.

He'd managed to stop himself just in time.

Kuroo sighed. Then squatted down in front of Tsukishima, "Then how about I tell you what I wanted to tell you instead?"

Tsukishima's head shot up. And he saw the smile—that same blinding smile that caused his lungs to constrict sometimes, unable to draw enough air.

"Or rather, what I wanted to do. Still do, in case that wasn't clear." Gently, Kuroo pried Tsukishima's hands open. Held them in his. "You don't have to hide from me, Tsukki. Or avoid me. Not ever." He'd never looked more devastating than he did just then. "Not even if I had found the courage to kiss you that time, and you didn't feel the same." Or more fragile. "...do you, Tsukki?"

Maybe time didn't change people, and maybe Tsukishima was still a fool. But he squeezed Kuroo's hand, met his eyes, and said, "Yes."


End file.
